Lewis Mumford Quote

But the object of primitive interchanges of blows between armed men was not the killing of a mass of people in battle or the robbing and razing of their village- but rather the singling out of a few live captives for ceremonial slaughter, and eventually serving up in a cannibal feast, itself a magico-religious rite.Once the city came into existence, with its collective increase in power in every department, this whole situation underwent a change. Instead of raids and sallies for single victims, mass extermination and mass destruction came to prevail. What had once been a magic sacrifice to ensure fertility and abundant crops, an irrational act to promote a rational purpose, was turned into the exhibition of the power of one community, under its wrathful god and priest-king, to control, subdue or totally wipe out another community. Much of this aggression was unprovoked, and morally unjustified by the aggressor; though by the time the historic record becomes clear, some economic color would be given to war by reason of political tensions arising over disputed boundaries or water rights. But the resulting human and economic losses, in earliest times no less than today, were out of all proportion to the tangible stakes for which they were fought. The urban institution of war thus was rooted to the magic of a more primitive society: a childish dream that, with the further growth of mechanical power, became an adult nightmare. This infantile trauma has remained in existence to warp the development of all subsequent societies: not least our own.